Nightshade: The Fourth Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller (17 page)

Fraser was doing a walk-around of the various units, checking that the equipment was functioning properly, drips hadn’t been compromised and patients were as comfortable as they could be. He opened the door to Mrs Dawson’s room. She was in her sixties and had been involved in a bad car accident that had burst her spleen, broken her back in three places and punctured her lung. She’d been lucky, she’d been wearing a seatbelt, and an airbag had cushioned her against the worst of the impact. Her husband hadn’t been wearing his belt and the airbag in front of him had malfunctioned and he’d ended up under the rear wheels of the truck that had smashed into them. Her face was a black and blue mass of bruised tissue but she was breathing on her own, which was a good sign. Fraser checked her drip, then dabbed a paper towel at the dribble of saliva that was running from her open mouth to her pillow. She swallowed and then moaned softly. ‘Ron?’

Ron was her husband. Fraser tossed the paper towel into the bin and left the room. One of the unit’s doctors was walking slowly down the corridor, texting on a BlackBerry. He looked up and smiled when he saw Fraser. His name was Joe MacDonald and he was newly qualified and still eager to please. ‘Fraser, how’s everything?’

That was always the sign of a newly qualified doctor or an intern. They bothered to remember the names of the nurses because more often than not it was the nursing staff who pulled their nuts out of the fire. ‘All good, Doctor MacDonald.’

‘I’m going to have a lie-down. Give me a shout if you need me.’

‘No problem, Doctor MacDonald.’ MacDonald hurried down the corridor towards the windowless room that housed the camp bed where doctors could snatch a few hours’ sleep when they needed it. It was one of the inequalities of the medical hierarchy. Doctors could nap, but a nurse would be sacked for sleeping on duty. Not that Fraser wanted to be a doctor. He didn’t envy them their long hours, or the stress, or the decisions they had to make on an hourly basis. Fraser liked people, and he enjoyed helping them, and that’s what nurses did. He’d always wanted to be a nurse, ever since he’d been in hospital as a child to have his tonsils removed. His classmates had teased him and his parents hadn’t been keen on his choice of career, but Fraser had stuck with it and he couldn’t have been happier.

He opened the door to Isabella Harper’s room. The little girl was lying in her bed, looking up at the ceiling. She smiled when she saw him. She put her finger to her lips and went ‘shhhh’, then pointed at the chair at the end of her bed where her father was sleeping, his head resting on a pillow jammed against the wall. Bella’s parents took it in turns to stay overnight in her room. It was against the rules, but Bella was nine years old and after all she had been through it was generally agreed the parents could come and go as they pleased.

Fraser went over the bed. ‘Can’t sleep?’ he whispered.

‘I’m not tired,’ she said.

‘Are you okay? Do you need anything?’

Bella shook her head. ‘I just want to go home.’

‘Soon,’ said Fraser. ‘You’re moving to a general ward tomorrow and I think you’ll be home in a few days.’

‘I saw Jesus,’ said Bella solemnly.

‘Really?’

Bella nodded. ‘He was very kind. And I saw the Archangel Michael. He was nice too.’

‘Good,’ said Fraser.

Bella’s father snored and moved his legs, then went quiet again.

‘Jesus gave me a message for you, John,’ said Bella.

‘What?’

‘There’s something he wants you to know.’

‘Bella, come on now, it’s time you were asleep.’

Bella waved at him, urging him to move closer. ‘Come here, John, I’ll tell you what he said. It’s important.’

Fraser frowned. He looked over at Mr Harper, but he was fast asleep.

‘Really, John, it’s important. But I have to whisper it, okay?’

‘If I let you whisper it, you’ll go to sleep?’

Bella nodded. ‘Sure.’

‘Okay,’ said Fraser. He bent over her and put his ear close to her mouth. He could smell her breath and he frowned. It was sour and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. Maybe the little girl hadn’t been cleaning her teeth, or perhaps it was something she’d eaten. ‘What is it you want to tell me?’ he asked.

S
ally Fraser heard the front door open and she rolled over and squinted at the alarm clock on her bedside table. It was just after seven. She groaned. She had to be up at seven thirty and she doubted she’d be able to get back to sleep.

She heard slow, steady footsteps as John walked upstairs. Sally hated it when John worked nights. She was a teacher and had to be at school by eight, which meant they hardly saw each other – the best they could manage was a couple of hours after they’d put the kids to bed and before he headed off to the hospital. The only plus point was that he was able to drop the boys off at the childminder’s in the morning.

She curled up and closed her eyes, desperately wishing she could slip back into sleep, and hoping John wouldn’t slip into bed hoping for a quickie before she got up. She took a deep breath, and then frowned. It was just after seven, but John’s shift didn’t finish until eight. She opened her eyes again and blinked at the clock. Twenty past seven.

She sat up, rubbing her eyes. ‘John?’ There was no answer. She got out of bed and padded across the carpet to the bedroom door. The first thing John usually did when he got in was shower, to get rid of the smell of the hospital. When he was on nights he used the guest bathroom, but there was no sound coming from it. ‘John?’ she called but again there was no answer.

She walked down the hallway, past the bathroom towards the boys’ room. The door was open and a shaft of yellowish light ran across the carpet and up the opposite wall.

‘John, what’s going on?’ she said.

‘Nothing, honey, go back to bed,’ said her husband. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’

‘Don’t wake them up yet, they were up late last night.’

‘Go back to bed, honey.’

There was a tenseness to his voice and Sally realised something was wrong. She reached the door but froze when she saw three-year-old Darren lying on his back, his eyes wide and staring. She knew instinctively he was dead – there was an emptiness in his eyes and his tongue was protruding from his mouth. Sally gasped and she covered her mouth with her hands. Her whole body began to shake.

She reached out with her left hand and pushed the door open. It scraped on the carpet, and then she saw her husband, bent over Gary’s crib. He had a pillow pressed over Gary and he was pushing it down hard. ‘Go back to bed, honey,’ he said.

‘What are you doing?’ she screamed, pushing the door wide open. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

John ignored her and continued to press on the pillow. She ran over to him and grabbed at his arm. ‘Get off him!’ she screamed. She pulled hard and the pillow came away. Gary was as dead as his brother, his eyes open and lifeless, his mouth forming a perfect circle. Sally reached for him, tears pricking her eyes. ‘What have you done?’

Before she could pick up Gary, John seized her by the throat, his fingers digging into her trachea, cutting off her breath. ‘It’s better like this,’ he said. ‘It’s better they don’t suffer.’

Sally tried to speak, but his grip was too tight. There was a look in his eyes she’d never seen before. It wasn’t anger, or hatred, it was something cold and hard, as if they had turned to glass in their sockets.

‘It’s going to be okay, honey. Jesus says so.’ He nodded earnestly. ‘Really, he says so.’ His left hand joined the right and he squeezed tighter. Her throat was burning and her chest was heaving but she couldn’t get any air into her lungs. Sally didn’t know enough human anatomy to realise it wasn’t the lack of air that was killing her, it was the fact that her husband’s hands had cut off the blood supply to her brain. She tried to beg him to let her go, but even if she could have formed the words she knew there was nothing she could say that would stop him. The last thought that went through her mind was that at least her boys hadn’t suffered.

J
enny was at her desk tapping away on her keyboard when Nightingale walked in. It was clear from the look on his face that something was wrong. He didn’t take off his raincoat, just dropped down onto the chair opposite hers. ‘He’s dead,’ he said.

‘Who’s dead?’

‘Danny McBride. The client.’

Jenny’s jaw dropped. ‘Please tell me that’s a sick attempt at humour.’

Nightingale sat down. ‘I wish it was a joke.’

‘What happened?’

‘He hanged himself, or someone hanged him. I had a quick look around and I didn’t find a note. And the last time I saw him he didn’t seem the suicidal type.’

Jenny put her hand over her mouth. ‘That’s awful.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Why are you only telling me this now? Why didn’t you call me yesterday?’

‘It wasn’t something I wanted to share on the phone.’

‘I can’t believe it. He seemed like such a nice man.’

‘He was.’

‘And his poor kids. And his wife.’

‘I know.’

Jenny folded her arms. ‘I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.’

‘I’m as shocked as you are,’ said Nightingale.

‘What did the police say?’

Nightingale looked pained. ‘I’m not sure if they know yet.’

‘What do you mean?’

He shrugged. ‘I couldn’t call it in, could I? Then I’d be right in the middle of it. The cops are already pissed off at me, it’ll only get worse if they think I had a hand in McBride’s death.’

‘Jack! What, you found the body and you just left it there?’

‘What else could I have done? The last time I made waves I got hit over the head and driven off the road. If I’d drawn attention to myself …’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows what might have happened. So yes, I put my tail between my legs and skulked away. Discretion being the better part of valour and all that crap.’

‘And what about his family? Who’s going to tell them?’

‘Someone will find him eventually,’ said Nightingale. ‘His wife will report him missing and I’m pretty sure the cops will check the farm. It’d be the obvious place to look.’

‘But you said it was suicide. I don’t understand why you couldn’t just report it to the police.’

Nightingale shook his head. ‘He was hanged but he wasn’t suicidal. You met him. He was fine. And like I said, there was no note.’

‘So what are you saying? Someone killed him and made it look like suicide?’

‘When McBride took me to the farm, he unlocked the gate and we drove down to the farm, leaving the gate open. When I found McBride his car was parked by the farmhouse but the gate was padlocked.’

‘So someone else padlocked the gate afterwards?’

Nightingale nodded. ‘Exactly.’

‘But who? Who would have done that?’

‘That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn’t it? I’m guessing someone who realised that he had hired me, someone who wants to hide the truth about McBride’s brother and what he did at the school.’

‘But that means it must be someone who knew you were on the case.’

Nightingale rubbed his chin. ‘That thought had occurred to me,’ he said. ‘It could be the cop I spoke to, or the coroner’s officer. Who was also a cop. Or the detective that Robbie put in touch.’

Jenny’s jaw dropped. ‘Are you saying the police are behind this?’

‘I don’t know, not for sure anyway. But I don’t want to be sitting in a police cell waiting to find out.’ He shrugged. ‘But it might not be a cop. I chatted to the locals in the pub and we don’t know who the cops spoke to.’

Jenny ran her hands through her hair. ‘What are you going to do, Jack?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘But we don’t have a client any more. That’s it, right?’

‘I don’t see why. He paid us two grand in advance. What are we supposed to do? Give it back? We at least owe him two grand’s worth of work. Besides, I want to know what’s going on, because something is clearly rotten in the state of Berwick.’

‘Now you’re misquoting Shakespeare?’

‘I’m under a lot of stress,’ he said. He pulled an evidence bag from his pocket. Inside were a plastic-handled screwdriver and two spanners. Like the knife, they’d had to travel in the hold on the flight from Edinburgh to London. ‘I got these in the barn – it looked like he used them when he was working on his tractor.’

Jenny took the bag from him. ‘What about your prints?’

Nightingale took a sheet of paper from her printer and pressed the fingers of both hands down onto it. He folded it and put it into another evidence bag. ‘There you go.’

‘You’re such a professional.’

‘That’s what they say. Coffee?’

‘Are you asking or making?’

‘I’m making.’

‘Then I’d love one.’

‘W
ell, this is a nice surprise,’ said Sandra’s mother, as Sandra kissed her on the cheek. ‘Dad’ll be so sad to have missed you. He’s fishing down at the canal.’

‘I’ll be back, Mum. But I wanted a chat with you.’

‘Tea,’ said her mother. ‘The kettle’s on. Come on through.’ She took Sandra down the hall and fussed around the tea things as Sandra sat down at the table and looked out over the back garden. It wasn’t the house that she’d been brought up in; her parents had downsized ten years earlier when the last of her brothers had finally moved out. They’d sold their five-bedroom house, bought a small bungalow with a manageable garden and put the rest of the money into shares, providing them with a comfortable retirement.

‘How’s my lovely granddaughter?’ asked Sandra’s mother.

‘She’s fine. It’s almost as if it never happened. She doesn’t talk about it, and we don’t ask her.’

‘When is she coming home?’

‘Hopefully tomorrow. Friday at the latest. She wants to go now, but the doctors say they want to keep her in a while longer. But they have promised she’ll be back home by the weekend.’

‘How is she … inside?’ She rubbed her own stomach and winced as if she was in pain.

‘The doctors say she’s fine. They did all sorts of tests and she’s all clear, you know, for HIV and things. And there’s no damage, just bruising. They gave her a shot so that she won’t get pregnant.’ Tears sprang to her eyes and she blinked them away. ‘Nine years old and they’re worried she might be pregnant. How awful is that?’ She took a deep breath. ‘She’ll be fine. It’s best we don’t talk about it. It needs to be forgotten so that we can all move on with our lives.’